You’ve bought the approach, now buy the shirt

March 15, 2007

Tickled by the news that BioMed Central is selling merchandise with various OA journal logos on. Before the imagination runs amok with the idea that this a potential business model for OA publishing (Stevan Harnad figurines? Peter Suber mobile phone facias?), note that BMC are giving away their commission to charity.

The Chem Central T looks quite smart but I’m not sure about the one with the slogan “biology direct” pointing at the armpit.

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3 Responses to “You’ve bought the approach, now buy the shirt”

You say this merchandising approach may not be viable for supporting OA, but BMC is charging €27.40 + P&P for a teeshirt (which is pretty steep I reckon, especially for cash-strapped students and freelance science writers). They’re only giving €2 to their chosen charity Computer Aid International. I doubt they’re going to sell many at this price, but either way that’s a pretty steep mark-up, given teeshirts can be bought in bulk for around €1 each if not less and printed for less than that. With a decent traffic level and more geeky street cred, like engadget or Digg or similar sites, I reckon this merchandising lark could rake in quite a decent profit even discounting for marginal charitable donations.

Point taken about the online marketing value, and a good spot; the original blog article states that “Any sales commissions resulting from T-shirt sales will be donated by BioMed Central to Computer Aid”, and yet the store states “For every T-shirt sold, BioMed Central will donate €2.00 to Computer Aid International”.